Amsterdam design firm NL Architects is perpetuating the trend with Bicycle Club, a cafe/velodrome mashup in southern China. The architects were invited by a housing developer to design a bike rental pavilion for a huge resort in Hainan province last year. After researching vernacular building types, they proposed a pagoda-style roof perched atop a simple glass box. The curving overhang, designed to accommodate Hainan’s tropical climate, struck them as an opportunity for experimentation. “Could the oversized top house another function?,” they wondered (cue lightbulb),“what about a velodrome?” (via A Cafe Where You Can Ride Your Bike On The Roof | Co.Design: business innovation design)
“Stephen King is rich, wants to pay more federal taxes, and is pretty pissed off about it.” — Stephen King: tax me, for fuck’s sake!
(via Obesity a ‘derogatory’ word, says Nice - Telegraph)
A quarter of adults in Britain are now obese, a figure that is due to more than double by 2050. Those from poorer backgrounds are much more likely to be obese than the more affluent.
But a government quango is now advising public health experts drawing up anti-obesity plans around the country to avoid using the ‘o’ word itself for fear of upsetting people.
Health campaigners last night attacked the softly-softly approach, describing it as “extremely patronising”.
(via Flavorwire » If Brand Logos Were Honest)
[video]
I found this man on 7th Avenue in Park Slope. He was leaning heavily on his cane, looking down, wearing a grimaced face. I felt bad for him, so I smiled and waved when I walked past. His face changed completely. He lit up, smiled wide, and gave me a cheery greeting. There was nothing forced about it. He seemed like a man who went through life looking for the smallest excuses to be happy.
I walked 50 feet down the sidewalk, turned around, and walked back to him. “I want to take your photo,” I told him, “because of how big you smiled when I walked by.”
He said: “Well I saw someone smiling at me who I didn’t even know. So I thought: ‘By God! I Better do something!’”
(via npr)
good:
The class of 2012 is about to get a gigantic wake-up call: In the last year, college graduates were more likely to be employed as servers, bartenders, and food-service helpers than as engineers, physicists, chemists, and mathematicians combined. Only three of the 30 occupations with the largest projected number of openings by 2020 will require a college degree—teachers, college professors, and accountants.
Today, new numbers find that half of college grads under 25 are out of work.
I kind of like this stat. Not sure that these grads will be any less happy. Or useful.
“
Poor neighborhoods, Dr. Lee found, had nearly twice as many fast food restaurants and convenience stores as wealthier ones, and they had more than three times as many corner stores per square mile. But they also had nearly twice as many supermarkets and large-scale grocers per square mile. Her study, financed by the institute, was published in the March issue of Social Science and Medicine.
From another paper: Dr. Sturm found no relationship between what type of food students said they ate, what they weighed, and the type of food within a mile and a half of their homes
” — The idea of the “food desert” is fading — Marginal Revolution“I was aghast to learn that the city’s harbour bridge, the main link between the centre and suburbs to the north, has no way at all for cyclists to cross. They must either plonk their bike on a ferry or take a fairly long detour. As an emblem for a city dominated by cars and roads it’s hard to beat. Like with Hong Kong, it’s not as if Auckland couldn’t do with more cyclists. New Zealand might more or less define itself through sport but it’s simultaneously one of the more obese nations on earth.” — How cities fail their cyclists in different ways | Peter Walker | Environment | guardian.co.uk
WaG is a dedicated space for women and gender-variant people to fix their own bikes, with mechanics on hand for help and advice. (via The London Bike Kitchen)
Only in London!?